In Thrive Capital’s first-ever investor letter, founder Joshua Kushner has some unexpected things to say about his venture capital rivals on the West Coast.
“It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of the opportunity,” Kushner wrote about AI in the letter, leaked to Bloomberg. “It would also be a grave error in our minds to let excitement weaken our investment discipline. … Within Silicon Valley in particular, the industry can become fixated on hyperincremental technological turns rather than where the technology ultimately leads.”
While his secretive New York-based firm, just like those in Silicon Valley, is betting heavily on AI, Thrive is doing so differently, he argues. There’s no so-called spray-and-pray investing. Thrive tends to goes big on the companies it backs. Bloomberg estimates about 90% of its capital is poured into the top 15 investments in each fund.
That makes Thrive, he contends, a company of independent thinkers. “We are independent because markets move between fear and enthusiasm, and neither is a substitute for judgment.”
His comments are in direct contrast to one of the basic premises of Silicon Valley venture capital: that it is a business of “outliers” as espoused by Marc Andreessen.
